Blog

Taking potshots

I feel ill, sick, unwell. In the space of moments I have established a scenario that reveals a flash of anger and destruction on someone else’s parade. It comes at me left of field, the situation is innocuous, an inoffensive Facebook photograph, a caption and then an unexpected thought, one that at any other time would have slide down the inner sewage groove and never have been revealed. This time however I am curious about it, as a child would be curious about a worm or a wood lice, a snake or a scorpion. Where did that come from, what does it mean, what does it do? Can I play with it? The enter button is pressed and there it is out in the world for all to see.

At the beginning of 2014 I consciously chose to change my reality. After 5 decades I am over struggling for survival, being alone and sabotaging my creations. I can feel the hairs lift on the back of my neck as the reality I am creating on Facebook unfolds and I consider that if you cant make an omelette without cracking an egg then perhaps this choice to create a new reality requires me to face up to and own deep seated unconscious patterns that have been keeping my old reality locked in.

Step back with me a moment to 5 years ago. I had been working for over 30 years in the business of information technology running the gamut of jobs and roles. I had created the freedom of being a contractor with big bucks, low responsibility, home working. I sat on the fence of committment; basking in the illusion of my own authority but actually beholden to the behemoths of industry for my survival. Swinging from intense periods of focused work and filthy lucre to extended fuges of amorphous travel and well heeled shoe string living. Every now and then I would think there has to be more to life than this. By my mid 40s the soothing murmer was morphing into a demanding thunder and as I am discovering the journey of change pivots on critical moments. In this case a simple email invitation to come learn about my intuition.

5 years on I have learned that intuition serves the agenda of the heart, a broader and more multi-dimensional agenda than that of the ego and our need for survival. I have revelled in learning this new language and the paradox of it that no matter how long you have been on the journey, there is always the joy of deeper heart connections married with the anticipation of new learning.

I have just spent two days immersed in a shamanic realm** deliberately designed to till the soil of the sub conscious mind; digging out deep seated gnarly roots, loosing up the secret underground network of matted brambles, aerating the soil, freeing fat, slimy globules of wriggling worms that are as equally fascinating and as they are repellent. Itt is no surprise then that in my deep overnight sleep I watch this metaphor play out as I step back into my old world and see how the old me maintains the status quo. An innocous comment about Larry Ellison, the enigmatic CEO of Oracle a giant of a company that was foundational for me in my technology days and a man who I dont know or have never met turns out to be fertile ground to reveal seething worms of anger in the glare of daylight. Like a child my focus has gone on to them eager to play and share. In my innocence I embrace what I have not seen, what in my fear I have been resisting. Decades of old anger sitting there on the surface of the earth and sitting there on a Facebook post. Nothing to do with the Facebook post, nothing to do with Larry Ellison and nothing to do with the photograph celebrating this sleek, beautiful marvel of sailing design, Larry’s boat, that I thought to key scratch.

I dont know what I know, but I know what I know is made up and what I make up serves to create the reality I experience. Now that the anger is no longer hidden and I choose to be curious about it I see I have been avoiding shame, embarrassment, rejection. I see my covert reaction to masculine authority, I see the destruction of my temper, the rage of my powerlessness and my anger at and judgement of my father, the foil against which I made up all that I believe to be true about men and me in relationship to men. I want to hide, I want to cry to turn back the clock and pretend that it never happened. I want to smooth over the earth, to hide all of those ugly worms under a nice smooth slab of concrete adding to the paving stones that have smothered this fecund, fertile garden. I want to put my flowers in neat pots to smile and say that it is all good. And that is what I do on Facebook as I fiddle with comments but still my focus goes back to the key scratch until I cannot ignore that putting my focus on what I believe it bad and wrong about me and what I do only creates a reality that perpetuates that.

I am caught on the ledge of a slippery slope, a moment to breathe, to acknowledge the pain of this reality that I have created for myself and ask my heart what would it love. In that space there is no question – I want to reclaim my garden, to grow creations that nourish my heart, body and soul. I want to step back and allow in the natural forces that rise to support me; to honour the powerhouse composters that enrich and condition the soil as they eat their way through it, marvel at nature’s pollinators as rediscover and seed the richness of my creations. What is obvious is to allow the worms to wriggle, to be with the discombobulation of bringing this garden back to its natural state and to focus on the work to do that. In this moment I am flooded with gratitude for the strong powerful men who have revealed to me the groove of that old story I have about the masculine; my father and the love he had to bring me into being, Larry Ellison for creating a company that taught me much of what I know about information technology, to Mark Zuckerberg for creating the platform to play this out this scenario, to Darren Eden, an intuitive master who is committed to transforming hearts through the creation of shamanic realms of learning and to William Whitecloud, who posted the picture that drew me into the ring of a psychic master whose wise foil refused to collude with the old me. It doesnt make sense to my rational mind but intuitively it is obvious that this story keeps me separate from the love and intimacy of a man in my life.